Chocolate-Chocolate Chip Cookies

Egg free!

The first time I’d ever flown business class, I was invited to a chef’s festival in Australia, where I was asked to do a demonstration along with other chefs from around the world. All the other chefs were being flown business class, except me…because at that time, I was considered a “blogger,” so wasn’t afforded the same prestige, or seating assignment.

I didn’t spend years dishwashing in restaurants, peeling cases of apples, baking dozens of loaves of bread, opening cases and cases of oysters, standing over a restaurant grill all night, being a line cook, then baking, at the best-known restaurant in the world, rolling out thousands of tart shells, picking through a gazillion baskets of raspberries, cutting out thousands of cookies, and writing ten books, to sit in a row of five seats across. The least they could have offered me was economy plus for the 20+ hour trip from Paris. They eventually capitulated, and I was upgraded from blogger to chef.

Frankly, I don’t know how Australians take those long flights, but I think they’re pretty sturdy people. Sydney ended up being an amazing experience (despite the 12-hour time difference, which takes a while to adjust to), with outstanding restaurants, multicultural cuisine (I got to cook with Kylie Kwong!..which was one of the most memorable days of my life), remarkably fresh ingredients, plenty of sunshine, happy people, and excellent coffee.

At the time, the coffee in Paris was pretty dismal. I went to Bill’s for breakfast one morning, and the coffee was so good that I started crying. I never got to meet Bill Granger (who sadly left us in 2023), but I had breakfast every morning with Diana Kennedy, who was one of the leading authorities on Mexican food. And when I say “authority,” she was known for being rather prickly.

For some reason, though, I got along very well with her. Except one morning, I needed a break, because she was also quite a force, and said I was going to eat alone. “I understand,” she said.

While no one’s invited me back to Australia, I still remember how good everything was. I was especially smitten with Bourke Street Bakery. While the croissant situation in Paris was the opposite of the coffee situation, their croissants were so delicious and flaky, they certainly rivaled (and bested) some of the best in Paris.

I wrote about them on my blog, and it was years later (or was it months?), they reached out to me to thank me for the mention, and I was pleased when I found out they had opened a Bourke Street Bakery in New York.

I recently was leafing through their book and landed on this cookie recipe. In Australia, cookies are called biscuits (and their tablespoons are 30% larger than the standard tablespoons), which is why — with all the changes going on right now — I’m wondering if someone is going to take the opportunity to finally move America to metrics.

In addition to metric conversions, Bakers have been thinking a lot about egg prices lately, which is especially difficult in the U.S. due to bird flu, with prices spiking and availability limited. People say they’re expensive there now, with prices averaging $4.95/dozen. Although from what I hear, and see online, eggs are going for a lot more than that.

In France, the average price has been, and still is, €3.76/dozen ($4). I pay a little more and get mine at a shop that sells eggs from small producers, and they cost €4.80/dozen ($5).

Eggs from chickens raised by “Edith”

They’re raised by Edith, and the sign says that they “eat liberally in the fields,” on a diet of wheat, barley, colza, and corn grown on their farm.

In France, eggs aren’t sold refrigerated, unlike in the U.S., where they are washed, which removes their protective layer, but in France, that protective layer remains on. It sometimes freaks out visiting Americans who are used to seeing eggs refrigerated in supermarkets, and I’ll admit that I still keep my eggs at home in the refrigerator.

As a baker, and cookbook author (and former blogger), I use plenty of eggs, so I feel your pain if you can’t get them. So I decided to give the Bourke Street Bakery cookie a makeover, using prune puree in place of the eggs. Prunes are called pruneaux in France, which is a little confusing because I sometimes slip and call them prunes, which in French, refers to fresh plums. Years ago, the prune industry in America tried to rebrand them as dried plums, to rid them of their stodgy reputation, which didn’t go over so well, and they’re back to calling them prunes.

The puree worked perfectly in these cookies, and the first batch came out big and chewy, bursting with chocolate flavor thanks to dark cocoa powder and quite a bit of chocolate added to the dough. I made them a second time, toggling the recipe further, playing around with the quantities of the other ingredients. I’ve made some notes in the headnote of the recipe, but whether you can get eggs or not, you’ll find these cookies are truly first-class.

Chocolate-Chocolate Chip Cookies

Makes 20 cookies

Adapted from Bourke Street Bakery: The Ultimate Baking Companion by Paul Allam and David McGuinness

Feel free to swap out the chocolate chips with dried cherries or nuts. The original recipe called for sour cherries, but I wanted to keep mine strictly in the chocolate lane.

My prunes were relatively plump, but if yours are very dry, they may need a little more water to hydrate them. If they’re not softened enough to puree after the time indicated, cook them with another tablespoon or so of water, until they’re soft. Before you puree them, the pan you’ve softened the prunes in should have little to no water in it, and the prunes should be soft enough to puree.

The original recipe also called for using chocolate that’s in the 55% range, which I used. These cookies are pretty fudgy, so you can save your high percentage chocolate for something else; I think you’d be okay using a chocolate that goes up to 65% here, although the dough might be stiffer. Their recipe also called for more sugar than I used, which makes a chewier cookie. I cut it down a bit using the lower amount listed. If you want your cookies to be chewier, use the higher amount of brown sugar.

You may have noticed that I put the metrics first in the ingredient list for the flour. I know a lot of you primarily use cups and tablespoons (I use them too), but their metric conversion for flour was a bit different than mine (and others — theirs is 150g flour = 1 cup of flour), so I used the 150 grams that they called for. If you want to use eggs in this recipe, use them instead of the prune puree.

Update: I’ve baked a few more batches of these cookies and found that ones baked on the upper rack of the oven bake more evenly. The prune puree can make the bottoms brown a little faster than cookies made with eggs, so it may be better for you to use the middle or upper rack of the oven to bake them on.

For the prune puree

3/4 cup (110g) pitted prunes, halved if large

1/3 cup (80ml) water

For the cookie dough

8 ounces (230g) bittersweet or semisweet chocolate, chopped

150 g (1 cup plus 1 tablespoon) all-purpose flour

1/3 cup (40g) unsweetened Dutch-process cocoa powder

1 1/2 teaspoons baking soda

1/2 teaspoon salt

8 tablespoons (115g/4 ounces) unsalted butter, cubed, at room temperature

1 cup to 1 1/3 cups (190-240g) packed light brown sugar (see headnote)

1/2 cup (155g) prune puree, or two large eggs, at room temperature

3/4 cup (120g) chocolate chips

To make the prune puree, put the prunes and water in a small saucepan. Cover and bring to a boil, then reduce the heat so it’s at a simmer and cook for 5 minutes. Turn off the heat and let the prunes rest, covered, until they’re room temperature. Once cool, puree the prunes in a mini-chopper or food processor, so they’re as smooth as possible, or pass them through a food mill. Measure out 1/2 cup of the puree.

Preheat the oven to 325ºF (160ºC). Line one or two (if you have them) baking sheets with parchment paper or silicone baking mats.

Put the chocolate in a medium clean, dry bowl. Set it over a saucepan of barely simmering water. Stir it gently, until it’s completely melted. Turn off the heat and set aside.

In a medium bowl, whisk together the flour, cocoa powder, baking soda, and salt.

In the bowl of a stand mixer fitted with the paddle attachment (or by hand), beat the butter and brown sugar together on medium-high speed until smooth and well-combined, about 2 minutes. Stop the mixer, add the prune puree (or eggs) and beat on medium speed until the puree is incorporated.

Stop the mixer and add one-third of the dry ingredients, then mix in on low speed. Add the second third of the dry ingredients, stopping the mixer and scraping down the sides of the bowl as well as from the bottom, to make sure any dry ingredients aren’t sinking to the bottom and not getting mixed in.

Finally, mix in the remaining dry ingredients. Remove the bowl of chocolate from the saucepan, wipe the bottom dry, then mix it into the dough. Stir in the chocolate chips.

Use a spring-loaded ice cream scoop (one that holds around 2 tablespoons/45g) or two soupspoons to scoop up rounds or mounds of the dough.

Place rounds of dough 2 1/2 inches (6cm) apart, evenly spaced, on a baking sheet or sheets (you’ll likely only get 6 to 8 per baking sheet, so you’ll have to bake them in batches) and bake the cookies, rotating the baking sheet(s) in the oven midway during baking until the cookies are puffed up and feel just barely cooked in the center, but still quite soft, about 9 minutes. Err on the side of underbaking rather than overbaking.

Remove the cookies from the oven and rap the top of each cookie once with a spatula or pancake turner to flatten them a bit, which compresses the cookies and makes them chewier. Eat the cookies warm or at room temperature.

The cookies are best eaten the same day but will keep a few days in an airtight container at room temperature.

Chocolate Chocolate Chip Cookies Recipe

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